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An anonymous reader writes About a week ago, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asked for Verizon's justification on its policy of throttling users who pay for unlimited data usage. "I know of no past Commission statement that would treat 'as reasonable network management' a decision to slow traffic to a user who has paid, after all, for 'unlimited' service," the FCC wrote. In its response, Verizon has indicated that its throttling policy is meant to provide users with an incentive to limit their data usage. The company explained that "a small percentage of the customers on these [unlimited] plans use disproportionately large amounts of data, and, unlike subscribers on usage-based plans, they have no incentive not to do so during times of unusually high demand....our practice is a measured and fair step to ensure that this small group of customers do not disadvantage all others."

I have a Verizon account with 2 cells and one data card on the unlimited plan. I pay $216 a month for the whole thing. In the past they were to only internet I could get in the third world city of Santa Ana, CA that we lived in. We used to stream netflix and game on the connection, sometimes running well into the high teens of GB. I did get a notice from them to the effect that they were going to cap or throttle me should this continue. I responded that a lawsuit for breach of contract sounded fun and that I would be happy to take them there after contacting the press. I informed them that I had logs from my DEDICATED firewall showing the average transfer rates and volumes etc over past months and I would be happy to see them in court in front of a jury of "my" peers. It was not to long after that that the tower that they leased was dropped and the signal went to crap in our area. So fuck them I says, I built a very high gain Yagi/Uda and put it on the roof facing the tower that I now had to hit. I went from -103dBm to -52dBm and got the bit rate back up. I then started downloading ISOs for fun and pulled down near 23GB that month. All the while logging. They then called me again and I promptly told them that unlimited was what I signed on for and I was paying for. I was using 3G and they had 4G rolled in the area. I suggested that they move me to the 4g or stop calling and wasting both our time. They chose option 2. The phone, electric, banks, and gas companies are out of control but they pay big sums to the assholes on the hill so they can be. The load is transferred to the assholes of the middle class. Half the time I feel like I am going to burp up corporate cum from getting fucked so hard from so many different companies and the governments.

I wouldn't call that abuse, it's what you PAID for. If these swindling thieves at Verizon cannot provide 100% capacity to 100% of their customers at all times, then they are overselling their service and pocketing the money instead of using that money to build out their infrastructure. They are committing fraud.

I'm glad my ISP doesn't do any of this shit and I can use my full capacity 24/7.

I'm glad my ISP doesn't do any of this shit and I can use my full capacity 24/7.

Unless you're paying an insane amount or have a very slow connection, the odds are that you can only do this because a lot of users near you don't. ISPs don't have the off-network capacity for everyone to saturate their connections all of the time and they provide a service that's a lot cheaper than a dedicated leased line on the assumption that most won't. This assumption is usually fine, because most of their customers don't come close to it. The 32TB/month that you'd consume if you saturated a 100Mb/s

What I don't understand is why they don't just make everyone's life easier and sell the unlimited plans by bandwidth, not 'data limit', i.e. unlimited 1Gb/s costs X, unlimited 2Gb/s costs more etc. Pay for your speed, and never sell more than some fraction of a towers total bandwidth, so that two or three big down loaders at once don't clobber everyone else.

Because guaranteed bandwidth is expensive. Let's say you have a 1GB/s pipe from an exchange. That exchange services 100 users. You can offer them each 10Mb/s connections that you can guarantee that they'll be able to saturate. Most of the users won't be using it all of the time though, so you could offer them 20Mb/s and still be pretty confident that they'd all be able to saturate it when they wanted to. Even at 50Mb/s you'd probably be able to, but now there's the potential for 20 of the 100 users to

ISPs used to advertise contention ratios on ADSL, but they stopped for this reason: your 1:50 contention ratio looks really bad next to your competitor's 1:10 contention ratio, but they don't advertise that the contended link for them is a tenth the speed of yours.

It seems very clear. If Verizon thinks it's okay to throttle bandwidth to "provide incentive to limit usage", then when it comes time to pay the bill, pay only 70-80% to "provide incentive to lower your monthly bill".

It seems to me that Verison's problem is on the marketing side. Their technical implementation is correct.

This is basic QoS. For a simplified example, let's assume there are only two users (but the network is still congested). One is trying to download a fix amount of data, i.e. watch a certain number of YouTube videos. Let's call her the "limited" user. The other is trying to download as many linux-distribution isos as she possibly can. Let's call her the "unlimited" user. (We assume that the carrier can guess which user is which, based in historical bandwidth use.)

If the carrier throttles both users equally - what some would consider the "fair" solution - then the limited user will have to wait while her videos buffer (but we will assume that she still watches the number of videos that she had decided on). The amount of data that the unlimited user can download equals total network capacity minus the size of the YouTube videos.

If the carrier only throttles the unlimited user, then the limited user gets a better experience, but still watches the same number of videos, i.e. downloads the same amount of data during the period of the congestion. The amount of data that the unlimited user can download still equals total network capacity minus the size of the videos, so she doesn't actually get any negative effect from the "unfair" throttling.

(The above reasoning holds even if the unlimited user is also watching video, if we assume that she has a large enough buffer. But if both users are doing video conferencing, then it would be better to throttle both equally.)

Of course, the best solution would be to upgrade the network to 4G, and this is what the FCC should force the providers to do.

It seems to me that Verison's problem is on the marketing side. Their technical implementation is correct.

Pretty much, although it is a little more than 'marketting' when a company sells you 'unlimited internet' but doesn't provide that. The issue pretty much boils down to the fact that for 99%+ of users 100GB a month would be plenty, but those users want the security of knowing that their policy is 'unlimited' so they won't a surprise charge if they use more than normal. 'Unllimited' is the wrong word to u

First of all, you don't understand what "basic QoS" is. Second, you're conflating the amount of data usage with the type of data usage. Let's try switching the types of data for the two users, and then see if your example is still reasonable:

This is basic QoS. For a simplified example, let's assume there are only two users (but the network is still congested). One is trying to download a fix amount of data, i.e. [download a certain number of linux-distribution isos] . Let's call her the "limited" user. The

I've seen much bigger problems with cell phone internet than this. For instance, there's the tactic of selling "4G" service with the caveat that you get 4G speeds on "preferred websites" for the first 200MB, and then get throttled down. Give us net neutrality on phones first, then start working on regulating how they can sell it.

anyways, the problem with penalizing the top 10% is that next month top 10% will have smaller use and the next month 10% is smaller and the next 10% is smaller... ending up with 100mbytes getting you into the top 10% users before long. what kind of "unlimited" is that?

Any measurement abbreviation where they expect it to be identified between two different measurements of the same type of subject (in this case data) by capitalization of the letters is a complete F-N fail of the first order.

If they don't actually have the resources to offer plans to subscribers without the disincentive of additional fees, then they shouldn't be offering such plans to customers in the first place.

Of course, both fees and throttling can equally be considered as disincentives, and the entire notion behind "unlimited" plans is that you wouldn't have to deal with any unexpected disincentives to continue use.

Verizon is still providing unlimited data, as much as the user can download. It is only the speed of the download that is changing. Did the original service agreement provide for maximum available bandwidth, or a guaranteed minimum bandwidth? If not then the problem is only with the perception of the user.

I'm not a customer and not a heavy user so I don't know what the level of "throttling" really is and if the throttled rate is still useful. Say I got 50Mbps and it was throttled to 25Mbps, but still un

Too true. And when I go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant, I expect to be able to take the entirety of all of the food in the buffet, throw it in garbage bags, and carry them to my table, denying everyone else in the restaurant anything to eat.

Yeah, that works.

You know what really works? People using common sense and realizing that there is no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth, food, or anything else. When such services are advertised I think we all realize, or at least the reasonable among us realize, that "unlimted" means "much more than the average consumer would utilize, and thus from the perspective of the average consumer, unlimited", not "as much as you can possibly use".

Who doesn't realize that limiting the highest users is sometimes necessary to ensure quality of service for everyone? Hey I paid my Verizon bill too, how come my service is slower because some dork has to torrent down 100 movies per month to add to his never-watched "collection"? Shouldn't I be complaining also about not getting the quality of service *I* paid for?

You know what really works? People using common sense and realizing that there is no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth, food, or anything else.

Then stop advertising it as such. "common sense" is nonsense, and I'm tired of people using a phrase that could literally mean anything. Popularity is irrelevant, and since what is believed to be "common sense" is often nonsensical, it's just not a very good term.

Too true. And when I go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant, I expect to be able to take the entirety of all of the food in the buffet, throw it in garbage bags, and carry them to my table, denying everyone else in the restaurant anything to eat.

That's a dumb metaphor, because the customers are using provided plates. It's like they're providing you a plate the size of your table, then insisting you put no more than one cup of food on it at a time.

"Unlimited" should mean limited only by whatever capacity the infrastructure and technology of the time can support... there should be no restrictions enforced on the use of the service. If the hardware can physically provide a level of service, then that level of service should be available. If Verizon were, in fact, throttling everybody so that their networks could actually handle the communication load, that would be one thing, and for unlimited plan users, it could still satisfy a reasonable definit

Well the contracts remain month to month after their term, unless you upgrade your phone or change your plan in some way. Those of us who are fighting to keep the unlimited plan have to buy retail price phones to upgrade.

Obviously "unlimited" is limited to whatever capacity their network can stand, but this is *deliberate* throttling... and is functionally no different from charging limited data plan subscribers extra fees for going over their allocated limits.

All they need to do is state a limit (200G 500G, 2T?,...) at which throttling will kick in, and stop lying about 'unlimited'. American corporations are so addicted to getting away with telling lies that they don't seem to even know when they're doingit.

Well, that's exactly what they're doing. The problem is they're doing it to those of us users who already have unlimited plans which they don't sell anymore, but are paying month to month and buying phones elsewhere to keep our contracts from being re-written.
They won't be throttling the new "unlimited" customers because there aren't any.

The thing is, you're on a month to month contract. The honest thing for Verizon to do is simply cancel those contracts, admit that they are not willing to invest enough in infrastructure to accommodate unlimited plans, and take the temporary PR hit.

Instead they have chosen the path of a thousand papercuts. Every so often them try to screw those still on unlimited plans, and every time it causes some sort of PR headache.

I think they can handle "unlimited" plans, the problem is with users who think unlimited means maximum bandwidth and no limits on how much data is downloaded a month, whereas the ISPs really intended for unlimited to mean how much data can be downloaded a month. Even a dialup plan can be unlimited. Everyone I *hope* understood that "unlimited" did not mean "infinite" no matter what metric they thought it applied to.

"Unlimited" means "limited by the physical nature of the connection", in essence. We all agree that you can't break the laws of physics and get more data per month than your connection can handle. Therefore, if my connection is 20Mbps down, I should be able to take 20Mbps down 24/7 for the whole month. THAT is unlimited.

If Verizon can't handle that, they should put a cap on it and be honest that it's not an unlimited plan. You can't have it both ways.

These unlimited contracts came into being at a time when 3G radios had just come out, so the amount of traffic any one device could produce on their network was an order of magnitude less than what they can today with LTE. It would be reasonable for Verizon to say that the plan is unlimited at 2008 bandwidths.

I don't recall these unlimited plans as even having a bandwidth number attached to them. Do you?

Wire-line ISP, you mean the ones connecting fiber and copper?If so, my provider sells me 100/100 mbit 24/7 unlimited that I pay about $80/month for.My record is 15 TB data transfer in one month, which according to the logs averaged out at about 50/50 for the whole month.I have never heard them talk about caps or limits when I am on the phone with them. I even called them to cancel their TV service since I am only streaming and downloading. They said nothing but cancelled the TV.

What user honestly thought that "unlimited" meant "unlimited bandwidth"? I remember some of these people whining when their fast internet got slow merely because their neighbors started using the shared cables. What was unlimited was the cap on how much data could be downloaded per month, not a cap on the actual speed.

Reality check. There are no elections being sold. There is only advertising/PR being sold on behalf of candidates. If the voting public is so goddam fucking stupid as to be swayed like sheep by political advertisements, they are getting PRECISELY the government they deserve. As a block, not as individuals, unfortunately. The voters who have functioning intellect are being sold down the river by the voters who are ignorant, stupid, and selfish bastards. Just assign the blame where it belongs.

Do the top users somehow get 100 Mbps during a time when I can only get 2 Mbps? If so, why is this allowed? If not, why is it a problem?

I don't recall any wireless service claiming that unlimited data would guarantee unlimited bandwidth (which is physically impossible). They usually use terms like "up to X Mbps", based on various factors such as signal strength and usage... so during peak times, everyone's bandwidth goes down equally.

Except what Verizon is doing is throttling only people with "unlimited" plans during peak times. People on paid usage plans are not subject to the same throttling. This isn't apparent throttling because of congestion, this is Verizon actively saying that because you have an unlimited plan, they will not allow you to use the available bandwidth, while if you drop the unlimited plan and subscribe to a metered plan then you CAN use the available bandwidth. Unfortunately the quote by the Commissioner is being dropped in these later articles where he said that he can see no legitimate claim for reasonable network management to be based on which plan a user subscribes to.

I would be in favor of throttling them after they exceed a certain download amount. Ie, first they have to prove that they're a heavy user.

Ie, they get exactly the same service as most normal non-entitled humans until they reach the normal human data cap. Once they hit that then their service is throttled, and the good thing is that they're still more special than normal humans like you or me in that they continue getting huge amounts of data without paying metered penalty rates only it comes slower (stil

The bottom line is that without upgrading their networks, they can't provide the promised service to 100% of their customers. Divide and conquer. Cut off a small fraction of people they feel they can label as "greedy", and hurt them most, rather than admit they're in default on their contract obligations and upgrade their network./. can kick and scream all they want, but idiots in Congress will happily buy it all up and ignore dissent like they do every time.

The bottom line is that without upgrading their networks, they can't provide the promised service to 100% of their customers.

Wrong (AFAICT).

They are actively throttling users. That is not the same as their network being unable to handle it, or for congestion to affect many users.

The users with metered plans are not being throttled. They may be using even more. Everyone could do that, and they would not throttle the metered users because they want that additional money. The unlimitted users are getting throttled when they hit some cap of MB/month. That's not unlimitted. Unlimitted would mean they should behave just like the metere

Why do they have to upgrade? It is not necessarily their responsibility. The cables were good enough back when the customers signed up for the service. The only reason they're not good enough now is that the customer's usage has gone up (more movies to watch). What next, cable TV now has the responsibility to upgrade the quality of their television shows? If you don't like the provider then drop the service.

So you're claiming they haven't gained more customers, and so the congestion is entirely the amount downloaded, and not that downloading increased, coupled with there now being many more users fighting for that same finite bandwidth?

You may remember the Shannonâ"Hartley theorem from engineering class as it relates to the bandwidth of a given channel. Well with radio transmission, this becomes something you really have to think about. SNR is set by environmental noise and FCC transmission limits. Spectrum is something you only have a license to a small amount of. As such, the total bandwidth you can put out has a hard limit on it. Everyone on a tower shares that bandwidth and there's just nothing you can do to increase it. You can'

Spectrum is something you only have a license to a small amount of. As such, the total bandwidth you can put out has a hard limit on it. Everyone on a tower shares that bandwidth and there's just nothing you can do to increase it. You can't "lay more fiber" or "use another laser" or anything like that which you can do on wired connections. On a given segment, there is just only so much bandwidth nature and regulations will let you have.

Available user bandwidth = total tower bandwidth / number of users. Given that total tower bandwidth is limited by spectrum allocation the easiest way to increase user bandwidth is to reduce the service radius of the towers (by having more towers, each cell smaller) so that the number of users per tower is smaller. The cheapest way is to throttle users. If the cell companies don't feel like spending to upgrade their network to be sufficient to handle what they are selling then they should find a way to g

Available user bandwidth = total tower bandwidth / number of users. Given that total tower bandwidth is limited by spectrum allocation the easiest way to increase user bandwidth is to reduce the service radius of the towers (by having more towers, each cell smaller) so that the number of users per tower is smaller. The cheapest way is to throttle users.

Along the same lines, when a cell phone network knows a tower is at full capacity, it should reject new customers that reside or work near such a tower.

Well with radio transmission, this becomes something you really have to think about.

[...]

So the more grabby people get with that bandwidth, the less there is to go around. If someone is using as much as they can because they have their phone hooked to their computer doing torrents, that slows everyone else down, even if you are are just using it in small spurts to check your e-mail.

Unfortunately, that's not how this works in real life.

My so-called 4G "unlimited" plan from T-Mobile gives me 2.5 gigs per month of data (initially it was a 5 gigs cap), and then after that, it's supposed to give me 3G speed. But it doesn't, after my initial "unlimited" cap is reached, only Facebook works anymore, my email doesn't, google maps doesn't, and my web browser doesn't. And the 3G speed it gives Facebook is actually pretty good, it's good enough to download and upload many pictures, but that 3G sp

It's not breach of contract, because the contract and terms of use says they can do (basically)
whatever they like in terms of throttling.

It is deceptive advertising, because they are selling it as an Unlimited service.
The FTC should be on their ass for telling bold faced lies in the way they describe their service
marketingwise and in the ad material.

Verizon has indicated that its throttling policy is meant to provide users with an incentive to limit their data usage

This is mostly about the fact that their business model is based on over-subscription, and they make their money by lying about what they're really selling you.

A user who has paid for unlimited bandwidth doesn't want or need an incentive to use less bandwidth -- this is just weaseling out of the contract by making sure you can't actually get that unlimited data.

Verizon is just plain psychotic. When they were advertising the upcoming 4G LTE service years ago, their advertising copy said users would be able to stream video and download HD movies. All kinds of wonderful things that weren't possible with the new caps they'd put on 3G. Then they rolled out LTE with the same caps as 3G. So, sure you could download Air Bud in HD but that'd be your data for the month.

Now they're all excited about XLTE doubling (or more) the speed available thru Verizon's network. I've seen those speeds and they're amazing. Absolutely freaking amazing. And totally useless to anyone without an unlimited account. WTF is a new customer supposed to do with 80 Mb/s down and 40 Mb/s up? That's the kind of speed I saw near Atlanta. Holy Hell, that's fast. Faster than any wired service I've had. And totally useless if you can only move 2 gigs a month. Why are they spending all this money speeding up their network when it's wasted on their customers. It's crazy.

And the numbers Verizon is throwing around don't make a lick of sense. (Of course, I can't find the exact numbers now so I'll guestimate.) They say around 20% of their customer base still has unlimited data. They say 95% of those people use less than 5 gigs of data per billing cycle. If those two statements are true, why is Verizon upset? They should be ecstatic. They cut off unlimited data in 2010 so they're claiming an amazing retention rate. And the vast, vast, vast majority of those people are overpaying for what they use. And they're paying full MSRP for unsubsidized equipment. Why on earth would Verizon want to rock that boat?

Because now people would have to download everything, e.g. while sleeping, so they can check whether they need it when they are actually at the machine. What I predict is people downloading everything that looks remotely like they might want to see it automated, e.g. while at work or sleeping, then checking it when they get to their machine, most likely throwing out 99%.

Then dont offer flatrates. I am perfectly fine with paying per GB. But i am not fine with paying for a flatrate, and when i hit an (conditions undisclosed or changing) limit, the providers decides (based on his calculation what a GB *should* cost) to do weird shit with my packets.

That being said, I believe everybody would be better off without flatrates. The people who need much less transfer than the provider includes in the flatrate calculation, and the providers, since the people would really have incent

...but I actually don't use more than about 600MB per month on average. I could have a newer plan and it wouldn't matter, but they charge exactly the same for their lowest current data tier ($30/mo) as I am paying for unlimited. I'm keeping it on principle.

Since we're in bad analogies, how about buying a bus pass and then having to wait for the next bus because the first one is full.

I know you said bad analogies, but there's bad and false. In this case the bus isn't 'full' they're stopping you getting on the bus, which has spaces, so that they can ensure there is space for other bus pass holders that have used their pass less in the last few days.

no this is winding your governor down the more you drive, so if you drive 1 mile to work the governor is wide open and you can drive as fast as you like, but if you drive more than 20 miles the governor is wound to half so you're stuck at 40mph, if you somehow manage to drive more than 100 miles after that the governor is set to 90% which means you're stuck at 5mph for the rest of the day. Good luck getting home before tomorrow.

Kinda like, getting into the car in the morning to go to work and being limited to 20mph as the roads are busy now.

No... it's like... the road sensor has detected that your vehicle has driven more miles in the past 30 days
than 98% of the other vehicles on this particular road, therefore, whenever you happen to be on a side road at
a junction, you will be given an automatic red light for an adjusted (increased) period of time in order to
incentivize you driving fewer miles during rush hour.

Um, remember the Broadcast Flag? The FCC claiming “ancillary” authority under the 1996 Tellecommunications Act to Regulate the Internet?

The FCC only exists to allocate RF spectrum and limit interference in it -- THE FCC IS NOT YOUR FRIEND (nor do you want them to be). They do not exist to make Internet providers do your bidding - if they're violating a contract (i.e. "unlimited" Internet), that's the proper role of the courts to enforce.

They haven't offered unlimited plans for years now. This is about customers who are still on unlimited plans and haven't yet "upgraded" to a paid usage plan. These people are not in any sort of long term contract. Verizon could simply tell them, "Your unlimited plan is gone, pick a currently offered plan," but they don't want to deal with the PR nightmare that would spawn.

Long-term? I don't think so. But, no one really likes Verizon anyhow and they are currently dealing with a competitor who is aggressively trying to poach their customers. Add to that their claim that 20% of their customers are still on unlimited plans and it does become understandable why they might opt for the path their taking.

I've seen any number of products use the word "free" when they quite clearly aren't. Free* (Postage & Packing not included). Free to play. Buy one, get one free* (cheapest one only, some products not eligible, etc.). Free phone on our monthly contract.

The problem is not using the word "unlimited" or "free". It's not clarifying what you mean. Technically, an "unlimited" connection would have no upper speed limit either (that's a limit, isn't it?). One per

I dont have the problem of the bandwidth per se, however I already too noticed there are a new class of "videos" that are specifically setup in web sites to evade your flash filters. In one particular case of a popular news site, I managed to track down the URL where they came from, and blocked it.
On the mobile side, fortunately my phone does not support flash, and I dont want it to.
Has anyone any hint how to block effectively those videos, stopping short of blocking javascript?